Specialty Produce: The app for people who don’t know what a rutabaga is

I grew up in the ’90s, a time when mac and cheese with hot dog chunks was considered a suitable and nutritious meal for tiny growing human bodies.

Like most kids, I survived on school lunch pizza and Coke. Now that I’m aware of Coke’s ability to strip battery acid from a car engine, I can’t fathom that any grown adult has ever let a child drink that canned poison, which we now know is a tremendous contributor to America’s depressing obesity epidemic.

Yet our school cafeteria was flanked on all sides by vending machines that spit out nothing but Coke products and “juice” that, in reality, contained zero fruit and 100 percent sugar.

In our house, meals were haphazard at best — mom and dad both worked, sis and I had sports and band and a desire to dine at the homes of friends who were permitted access to MTV. By the time I made it to my junior year of college, my meal plan had run out and I found myself wandering Target, asking strangers what a sauce pan is.

All that time spent growing up and I’d forgotten one very important thing: I never learned how to cook.

At 20, I started with the stuff I’d grown up on: mac and cheese, pasta, casserole. Suffice it to say, college weight gain came easily.

It wasn’t until I settled in Texas that cooking became something other than an experiment in unhealthy futility, and really, I’ve got my hippie friends to thank for that. Have you ever tasted an organic German chocolate cake baked from scratch with fresh coconut and eggs from the backyard? It’s like winning the mouth lottery.

These days, after a long day at work, I like to sip a hefty craft IPA while I hang out a little with my vegetables. Have you ever looked at the intricate fractal pattern on a fresh head of cauliflower, or peeled open a pea pod to find each tiny little pea lined up in a beautiful, somehow adorable row? Turns out cooking is kind of cool — it’s like science you can eat.

Considering that two years ago I didn’t know what basil was, I’m proof that anyone can learn how to cook delicious, nutritious meals — and enjoy doing it. To aid my lengthy learning process, I browse the selection at the Beaumont Farmer’s Market every Saturday morning and buy just one vegetable that I have no idea how to cook.

Once home, I Google this humble veggie and take in all the information I can: where it comes from, how to cook it, what to cook it with. After a particularly fruitful experience with radish and bok choy (sautee them with onion in butter — you’ll thank me later), a BFM farmer heard of my weekly adventure and proudly held out her iPhone, displaying the app that has revolutionized my food-life: Specialty Produce.

With every conceivable type of produce in its library, this app tells you not only how to cook those crazy purple beans you got at last weekend’s market, but it also shares recipes, nutrition data, geography and history. Did you know that radishes have their own holiday in Oaxaca, Mexico, or that they were used as offerings in Greek and Roman temples?

Head over the app store and give this free app a shot. Go on: Cook something delicious today. Become that insufferable dinner party guest who won’t shut up about garlic germination.